Thirty-One Nil

by James Montague

  The US had a tough start, away to Honduras. Many complain that CONCACAF World Cup qualification gives Mexico and the US an easy ride, but those who do probably haven’t considered what the US faces when it goes on the road in Central America. Aside from the usual anti-American sentiment, Honduras can also claim to be one of the most dangerous countries on earth. As Andrew Keh in the New York Times pointed out before the game, the game’s host city, San Pedro Sula, ‘was the most violent city on the planet. According to the United States Department of State, there were 159 homicides for every 100,000 residents in 2011. The area’s population is about one million.’ Troops with machine guns guarded the team’s every move. On match day itself 45,000 people would cram into the stadium. The Honduran government declared a national holiday to ensure the match was full. It’s not unusual for players to be pelted with objects ranging from bottles full of urine to rocks. ‘In terms of batteries being thrown at me, I think I’ve seen it all,’ US striker Jozy Altidore told Keh before the game. In CONCACAF qualification at least, the United States is everyone’s worst enemy.

  Sure enough, with 45,000 screaming home fans – and only fifteen official away fans – Honduras won 2-1. Life on the road might have been tough for the United States but their home form was exemplary. They won every game at home, without conceding a single goal. More importantly the crowd had, for once, been an advantage. ‘Any time you can play in a stadium when you have more fans rooting you on is better, you have that home field advantage,’ midfielder Clint Dempsey said before their first home game, in Denver, against Costa Rica. ‘It’s difficult sometimes being an American player. You find times even in your own country when you feel like you are playing away.’ Yet it all nearly went very wrong. A blizzard hit Denver during the Costa Rica match, dropping so much snow that it was almost impossible to distinguish between the white shirts of the American players and the pitch. Conditions were so severe that the referee took the players off the pitch. When they returned, the US won the game with a goal from Dempsey. The Costa Ricans, who had tried to get the match postponed, were livid. ‘I asked them to stop. They should suspend the ref,’ Costa Rica coach Jorge Luis Pinto told the press after the game. ‘It was an embarrassment. It was an insult to Costa Rica.’

  The Costa Ricans would get their revenge. When the US team arrived in the country they were made to wait in line at immigration along with everyone else, every request for a training pitch was turned down, they weren’t provided with any balls to practise with and, best of all, the nation’s cab drivers had agreed a ‘go-slow’, ensuring that the US team coach would be stuck in traffic when it arrived. They ended up losing 3-1. But their home form was enough to carry them to the top of the group, to Columbus, Ohio, and another dos a cero against Mexico. The result left Mexico in deep trouble. El Tri was enduring the worst World Cup qualification campaign since they failed to make it to Italia ’90, itself a rare event given their World Cup pedigree. They had hosted the tournament twice and appeared in the finals a further twelve more times. They were fifth in the group after drawing five of their early games and the 2-0 defeat to the US meant they could lose out on a play-off spot to Panama. They had only two games to sort it out. But, back in Columbus, the US fans waited for the result, chanting ‘We are going to Brazil’ to each other, and ‘You’re not going to Brazil’ to the Mexicans. When the match in Honduras finished in a 2-2 draw, the US had qualified for Brazil. The US players, who had also been watching the Honduras match on TV in the dressing room, ran out to the pitch and sprayed the delirious fans with champagne and beer.

  Six days later, back across the Atlantic in Cairo, one American was still unsure of his plans for next summer. Bob Bradley, who had taken the US to the last sixteen at South Africa 2010, was sitting in an auditorium alongside the national coaches and football officials of nine other nations. Well, eight other nations. Inexplicably the Nigerian delegation had not turned up. The ten teams had finished top of their qualification groups and were now waiting to see who they would be drawn against for the final, two-leg Brazil 2014 play-offs. There had been many shocks along the way. Two teams had a chance of qualifying for a World Cup for the first time: the tiny West African state of Burkina Faso and, incredibly, Ethiopia. The Walias had made it to the final round of qualification despite being one of Africa’s lowest ranked teams. They had begun their journey in the preliminary round two years before, the same round that saw Rwanda play Eritrea. Ethiopia had drawn their first game against war-ravaged Somalia 0-0 but won the return 5-0 before going on to top a group that contained 2010 hosts South Africa.

  Bob Bradley’s Egypt had bigger issues to contend with. As well as having to come to terms with events in Port Said, he also had to deal with the fallout of both the revolution and its counter-revolution. Since we had met there had been a coup in Egypt, deposing the country’s president, Mohamed Morsi. It was rumoured to have caused problems in the camp. Morsi was a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood and the team’s beating heart was Mohamed Aboutrika, a devout Muslim and a supporter of Morsi. According to Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl, who wrote a profile of Bradley, as Muslim Brotherhood supporters were killed in their hundreds on the streets after demonstrations Aboutrika took to Twitter to express his dismay. He spoke out against the coup which had divided the country between those who supported the Brotherhood and those who had seen the army’s takeover as necessary to stop the clumsy process of Islamification that Morsi and his followers had tried to push through:

  I supported Dr Morsi out of complete conviction, Aboutrika tweeted. In light of the success of the January 25 revolution and the freedoms and expression of opinion that followed ... I think there will be a real democracy and respect for other opinions, but unfortunately this hasn’t happened. So I decided not to talk politics. But when it has to do with reputation and dignity I will not be quiet.

  Such was the reverence in which Aboutrika was held on all sides of Egyptian society that few called for him to be banned, as had happened with other players who had expressed unpopular or contradictory views to whichever government or army general was in power at the time. ‘Look, Trika has had the strength to always stand behind his beliefs and say what he thinks, and that doesn’t always work here,’ Bradley told Wahl before the draw. ‘I will defend that part of him for ever, because he is a good man and cares about Egypt. In order to focus on doing everything to get to the World Cup, he’s picked up on the need to not be high profile at the moment.’ Despite the coup and the divisions, the team kept winning. In fact, they were the only team in World Cup qualification that, up to that point, had won every single game, six out of six. Aboutrika and the lightning quick winger Mohamed Salah had starred in the campaign, having scored eleven goals between them. They finished top of the group and with it secured a seat at the draw alongside the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Tunisia, Algeria, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon and, of course, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso.

  Aside from Egypt’s battles with itself, African qualification had been beset by ineptitude elsewhere. Qualification campaigns had either been saved or ruined by a series of administrative blunders over the use of recently naturalised players and even accidentally fielding players who had been banned. Ethiopia believed they had qualified for the play-offs with a game to spare, only to have a 2-1 victory over Botswana changed to a mandatory 3-0 defeat for fielding a player who should have been suspended. It brought South Africa back from the dead, but Ethiopia managed to beat Central African Republic in the final game to qualify for the last round.

  In Group L Togo were punished for fielding an ineligible player against Cameroon, who had themselves been briefly suspended by FIFA. Togo had won the game 2-0, but transforming that into a 3-0 victory for Cameroon completely changed the calculus for the group. Libya were top and had only needed a draw against Cameroon to make it to the final round. The country had survived the downfall of Colonel Gaddafi and a qualifier was played in Tripoli. In fact, many of the players had left football to go and fight for the
rebels on the frontline. FIFA’s decision, however, meant that Cameroon were now top and handed a huge advantage. They beat Libya 1-0.

  In Group J Liberia were punished for the same offence but it made little difference. The top two teams, Senegal and Uganda, played their final game knowing victory for either would be enough to qualify. Uganda were now coached by Milutin ‘Micho’ Sredojević, the gruff, hard-talking Serbian coach I had met in Kigali when he was in charge of the Rwanda team. Rwanda had finished last in their group and sacked Micho over the team’s poor run of form, but Uganda drafted him in for the end of their campaign and the do-or-die game against Senegal. Senegal won 1-0, too.

  But the most egregious errors had both elevated and condemned the tiny Cape Verde Islands. The West African state, which has a population of just 500,000 people, had been on the verge of World Cup elimination. The Blue Sharks is a team made up of players from the local league in the West African islands, mixed with pros from the Portuguese-born diaspora. Their part-time coach, Lúcio Antunes, has a day job as an air traffic controller at Cape Verde’s biggest airport. They had managed to finish second in their group to Tunisia, but were thrown a lifeline after another team in their group, Equatorial Guinea, selected striker Emilio Nsue, a former Spanish youth international, for a game the previous March. Nsue’s goals helped Equatorial Guinea beat Cape Verde 4-3, but it later emerged that he had been deemed ineligible by FIFA and the result was reversed, bringing the Blue Sharks’ campaign back to life. They were now within striking distance of Tunisia, who they played in the final game. And, sure enough, Cape Verde won 2-0. Tunisia, though, knew that wasn’t the end of the story. After the game they too examined the paperwork and immediately appealed against the result. The Tunisian federation had discovered that defender Fernando Varela was technically still banned. Varela had been sent off against Equatorial Guinea and, with the match result annulled, Cape Verde had believed the red card would also be annulled. Not so. A 2-0 victory to Cape Verde had been transformed into a 3-0 victory for Tunisia. ‘It is a nightmare, it is incredible, incredible,’ the deputy president of Cape Verde’s federation, Lena Vasconcelos, told me on the phone. ‘Lots of people have phoned up to tell us we are right, that when a match is forfeited all the red and yellow cards are taken away.’ The appeal failed and Tunisia prevailed. All in all seven African teams were penalised for getting the rules wrong.

  Even given the chaos going on in Egyptian football, its FA had at least managed to get their paperwork in order, and Bradley had negotiated the group stage of African qualification with aplomb. As he sat in the room waiting for the draw there were two teams that almost everyone wanted to avoid: Algeria and Ghana. Four years earlier, Egypt had played Algeria in one of the low points of African football. The violence surrounding that fixture has been well documented and Bradley, and the Egyptian authorities, wanted to avoid a repeat of that circus.

  Ghana, on the other hand, posed a different set of problems. They were, by most people’s calculations, the best team in Africa. Bradley had had his own bad experiences playing them. When he was coach of the US in South Africa, he had seen his team top their group and secure a last-sixteen knock-out match against Ghana. A solitary goal early in extra time by Asamoah Gyan, the same striker who would miss the penalty that would have seen Ghana later qualify for the semi-finals, eliminated the US and Bradley.

  In the end, the draw in Cairo came down to the last few balls. Egypt were drawn against Ghana. It wasn’t great news, but Bradley wasn’t giving anything away. ‘We are the strongest team in the group,’ he said afterwards. ‘We are not afraid of confronting Ghana.’

  **

  There is no party in Žilina after the Slovakia–Bosnia game. Due to the huge number of Bosnians in the city, the match has been deemed high risk and almost every bar has been forced to close early. I walk back from the stadium through the empty cobbled streets, past the discarded flags and banners. The main square and the stage are silent. The only people left on the streets are the odd gaggle of bored riot police, left behind just in case, and a few stray packs of Bosnian fans. They hug the side streets furtively looking for a bar to call home for a few, final hours. Bosnia, on the whole, didn’t deserve to beat Slovakia. But the comeback, at one down, was something new for most of these fans. The team didn’t crumple even if they had made things harder for themselves. The Dragons did what they had to do. Now their destiny is in their hands. They have two final group games, against Lichtenstein and Lithuania, home and away. The fans who had come to Žilina from every corner of the world agreed. If they failed to beat either team, they didn’t deserve a place in Brazil.

  Down one street, bumping along a wall, hands in pockets, red fez perched on his head, Fahrudin is walking home after failing to find another drink. ‘Wow. That was some game. We didn’t play particularly well, but we are almost there, we are almost there,’ Fahrudin says, relieved. He looks exhausted. Like every other Bosnia fan I speak to, Fahrudin believes they have made it, that the match is much more important than a simple victory. ‘We showed so much character to be one nil down, losing at home and then being one nil down first half,’ he explains, shooing away a young female Roma beggar standing hopefully nearby with her palms outstretched. ‘This game,’ he says, pounding his chest with his fist, ‘made this team. We’ll definitely do it now.’

  14

  ICELAND, NORWAY

  Oslo, Norway. October 2013.

  It is 11 a.m. and Eidur Guðjohnsen is standing with his team-mates in a nightclub. At least, it looks like a nightclub. The room’s walls are painted colourfully; spotlights illuminate a stage and what could pass for a small dance floor. In the centre a strangely shaped bar offers beer and nuts while the low clattering of dance music plays over the PA system. The Iceland national team are politely waiting in a line, hands behind their backs, in the Ullevaal Stadium in Oslo. Tomorrow Iceland play Norway in the final round of matches in European World Cup qualification. Regardless of the competition, the match would always have aroused some local interest. Iceland was settled by Vikings in the ninth century ad and changed hands several times before gaining full independence from Denmark after the Second World War. Its tiny population, cold temperatures, inhospitable winds and remote location – Reykjavik is the most northerly capital city in the world – means that a match between Iceland and pretty much anyone has usually been a foregone conclusion. Its league, for example, is ranked among the worst in Europe. But then something strange started to happen. Iceland had been drawn in Group E with top seeds Norway, Switzerland and Albania. They had been drawn from pot four, the lowest ranking possible in European football. UEFA considered Iceland to be on a par with San Marino, who had never won a competitive game, and Andorra. Not much was expected of them, but when Iceland beat the group favourites Norway in their first game it was clear that they had been massively underrated. ‘I think it’s the first time in the history of Iceland where we’ve not had just three or four quality players but we have a whole generation,’ Guðjohnsen says as polite Norwegian journalists nudge past. ‘We are a nation of 360,000 and look at the quality of footballers we have right now.’ He points over to Gylfi Sigurðsson, Iceland’s midfield general who plays for Tottenham Hotspur, and striker Kolbeinn Sigþórsson who plays for Ajax. ‘It’s extraordinary.’ Even more extraordinary is the fact that Iceland is on the verge of becoming by far the smallest nation ever to qualify for the finals. It was a record that, if they broke it, was unlikely to be broken again. Iceland would forever be the ultimate underdog.

  Guðjohnsen has become used to being Iceland’s only star. For over a decade he has played at the highest level, starting out at PSV alongside a then unknown Brazilian kid called Ronaldo. He then scored over seventy goals for Bolton and Chelsea before signing for FC Barcelona. He’s thirty-five now, playing in Belgium, and this campaign with Iceland is likely to be his last. But it could end in Brazil, even if just a few weeks earlier the campaign had looked like it was all over. While Romania and Hunga
ry were throwing insults at each other in Bucharest, Iceland had gone 4-1 down to Switzerland with only half an hour left to play. In the previous game they had been hammered 4-2 by Slovenia in Reykjavik, too. But then Iceland launched perhaps the most extraordinary comeback in World Cup qualification. Coach Lars Lagerbäck threw on Guðjohnsen to play deeper in midfield. It is all his legs can manage these days. Sigþórsson coolly slotted home Iceland’s second but it was the young AZ Alkmaar winger Jóhann Guðmundsson who scored with two blistering left-foot shots, one in the ninety-second minute, that secured a 4-4 draw. At just twenty-two, he had scored a fine hat-trick and salvaged what proved to be a vital point.

  Now it all comes down to this, a final group game against Norway. Win, and Iceland will reach the play-offs for the first time in their history. A draw might even be enough if Slovenia fail to beat Switzerland. The question was: how had Iceland managed to put together a team of young, talented players who were all now playing at good European teams with such a tiny talent pool to draw from? The answer was quite simple. ‘The first full-size indoor pitches were built thirteen years ago,’ Guðjohnsen explains. ‘So this is the first generation of players that has played the whole year through which wasn’t always the case before. We had the league for three or four months and the rest was pre-season.’ There was also the coach. Iceland had hired Lars Lagerbäck, the veteran former Sweden manager who had coached at three World Cup finals himself. With the Swedish team he’d had to control the mercurial talent, and volcanic temper, of Zlatan Ibrahimović. After that he was in charge of Nigeria at the previous World Cup before taking the Iceland job. ‘He came in before this campaign and did extraordinarily well,’ says Guðjohnsen. ‘He gives you a lot of freedom but is very disciplined.’